Donnie Seymour, the host of SportsGrid’s The Early Line, knows that the idea of professional sports teams tanking their season for a high draft pick is far from a unique concept. We recently saw an example of this in Philadelphia as the 76ers continued to field subpar teams with the hopes of acquiring lottery picks in upcoming drafts. After all, it was the 76ers that practically coined the phrase, “Trust the process.”
In the NHL, we saw the Pittsburgh Penguins use the tanking strategy to land Marc-Andre Fleury, Evgeni Malkin, and Sidney Crosby between 2003 and 2005.